When Humanity Is Broken, Where Do We Find Human Dignity?
Wrestling with the horrors of our culture
Since 2023 began, there’s been non-stop violence in the headlines. We’re bombarded with overwhelming and heartbreaking news on a daily basis.
Despite the headlines, our leaders are incapable of civil discourse with each other. They’re eunuchs of the monied power brokers, lobbyists, and their own egos.
Our culture of violence is a cry for help.
Yet, we read and hear the screaming voices of divisiveness everywhere. They drown out the little voices of reason and calm begging for this to end.
Have we spun out of orbit so severely that there’s no coming back?
I don’t think so.
The death of Tyre Nichols has shaken the social conscience once again.
It’s sent tremors through our collective being.
We don’t just want answers, we want solutions.
We look to the people we elected and shake our heads. They’re too busy hustling for the next election to care.
Have they ever cared? Really!?
If they did, they would have made gun control happen years ago. Not to mention curtailing the militarization of the police decades ago.
They talk a good game… to get your vote. Nothing more.
Okay, so where do we go, and what do we do?
We go inward and all around ourselves.
This past week I read two articles where the author was soul-searching on this subject.
The first is
who writes White Pages. His article What are you supposed to notice? What are you supposed to ignore? challenges our collective response.He asserts that our response is directed by what we consume as information and what we aren’t told. He’s right.
I contend we’re fed a steady diet of deliberate disinformation. We’re lured by distractions to keep from caring or thinking. We’re treated like cats with a laser pointer bouncing all around. And we fall for it. Why?
He ends his post with this point
But we always have a choice. We do actually have agency as to where our attention does and doesn’t go, about what questions we do or don’t ask. We can choose whether we merely decry the actions of five cops, or if we merely say that the problem is cops in general, or if we ask the bigger questions.
Who is our neighbor?
To what do we owe them?
What kind of lives do we all deserve to live?
What would truly keep us all safe?
Who and what is worthy of our attention?
The next author is
who writes The Examined Family. Her article How could Black police officers do this? questions our society and culture of violence.She raises systemic bias and violence, along with our long history of cultural conditioning. This quote from her article is worth noting for all of us.
If I can weather that remembering, then it leads to better questions. Not, “How could Black police officers do this?” but “How can we redesign our institutions of community safety so that violence is as rare as humanely possible?” Not, “How can I be one of the good ones?” but “How can I wrestle with my ‘badness’ and leverage my ‘goodness’—both of which are inevitable and worth paying attention to?” Not, “How can I listen to and imitate the people with the answers?” but “How can I listen to the wise folks and keep doing my own work to make this country less violent and more just?”
Both of these authors share the same questions: Who are “Others” and who are “We”? Aren’t we the same?
Living in an urban city, I want to lend a twist to this.
Are we the same as each other? We should be, but we’re not. Why?
As Courtney points out, it’s cultural conditioning.
The city I live in has a vast mix of cultures. People from all over the world make it their home.
I’m white, I’m also a minority. There’s a definite bias when people interact with me. They have come to fear and distrust white people (for good reason).
I wrote this article, The Dangers Of Looking Like A Karen: How Stereotypes Are Destroying Our Society on August 22, 2020, in an early-Covid post-George Floyd period.
Our country has been deliberately polarized. For as long as we have been a nation, White Anglo Saxon Protestants (W.A.S.P.) have pit people against each other as a form of control. It’s been handed down for over 250 years to our current day.
We are at a crossroads. We can let stereotypes and labels divide us further or we can unite in strength.
This vicious cycle will keep turning round and round until we start from the ground up. We keep buying into this game, it’s a losing game… people keep dying. This is what I proposed to deal with the problem,
Being labeled a Karen doesn’t hurt my feelings. It breaks my heart. It makes me worry that all that I can offer will be rejected because of my whiteness. People of color cry out that they’re stereotyped by their skin color. So am I. We all are.
This story is about how we are alike, not different. I’m trying to point out that each of us is prejudice in some way. My whiteness is looked at with hatred and fear; as power and righteousness. It depends on who you ask.
Ask me how I see myself: as a human being, just like everyone else. I have hopes, dreams, fears, worries, love, work, and sleep just like you do.
If we allow others, whoever they may be, to put a wedge between us, we will destroy ourselves. We must rise above all this. Each one of us has that power. Each one of us can look beyond that insult, comment, or other flashpoints, and not react. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and John Lewis taught us this. Let us hold their light in our hearts and one by one unite not fight.
We must work together to eradicate the true injustices in our society. To make right the wrongs that are destroying our communities and people. We can only do this as a united front.
The solutions lie within each of us.
Garrett and Courtney both ask those critical questions.
Who is my neighbor?
The Good Samaritan found his ‘neighbor’ in a ditch. Was the neighbor a Samaritan? No, but he helped him anyway.
We are all human beings; physically the same except for skin color.
We’re born the colors we are. No one is better or worse than the other.
Children don’t know prejudice until someone teaches them.
White cops kill people, Black cops kill people. People kill Asians, and now Asians go on shooting sprees. What’s the common denominator?
Guns and divisiveness.
How does this get into our heads? Media and Politicians. The same people who stir the pot and stoke the fires.
Garrett points out that we’re told to notice one thing but not another. It sounds like a shell game to me… Misdirection is used by conmen and thieves.
So, what to do?
Rely on ourselves to become our better angels. I know you can.
And start sharing your goodness where ever you go. Become a light in this darkness. Find a little path to making your patch of the world a better place. Little by little, inch by inch.
There are so many people who feel like you. They want to find hope in this messy world we live in.
It takes one person to openly live with human dignity and treat others the same way to start a movement. No special equipment is needed, just your open heart and a little courage.
If you work each day to be the kindest, most forgiving, and loving person inside you and go spread it all over, you’ll start making a difference. It really works.
The best part is you’ll feel really great doing it. You’ll smile from ear to ear.
It won’t make all of this horror go away, but it’s a start. You may meet someone on your path that wants to join you. It just takes the first steps to start change.
On a brighter note, I want to share a really cute and funny story I read by
Reluctant Nomad
you might want to check out: Six Dogs...and a Donkey It made me laugh, make sure to listen to the sound bite.
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(and thanks for the shout out ;))
Thanks again for your thoughtful musings. I appreciate the idea that we need to focus on our shared humanity and the deeper questions!